Bordeaux Housewives

by Daisy Waugh

  Jean Baptiste notes the empty lager glasses lined up between Murray and Len. ‘But you have,’ he says simply.

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s been a long day. We kept a tab, though, didn’t we, Len?’

  ‘Er – yeah,’ Len says doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, never mind,’ Daffy interrupts blithely. She doesn’t care. Not today. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you wouldn’t cheat me! Just make a little note somewhere and let me know…’ Unconsciously, Daffy’s hand, resting beside her, twists to take hold of Jean Baptiste’s. ‘Has there –’ She glances nervously above her head, not wanting to ask directly, in case Murray and Len haven’t noticed them. ‘Have you seen anyone else since you got here?’

  ‘No.’ Len belches. Shakes his head. ‘But there’s some people upstairs. Creeping around. Isn’t there, Murray? I’ve heard them. Plus Sara was running around like a blue-arsed fly, up and down, up and down. So I guess you’ve got some new visitors up there.’ His long, hot, unshaven face cracks into a grin. ‘At least I hope you have! God knows what’s going on up there if you haven’t!’

  ‘Allez,’ says Jean Baptiste. ‘Let’s go and find out.’ They leave the room together, still holding hands.

  ‘Aye-aye,’ Murray says, watching them go. ‘We didn’t see that coming, did we, Len? Should’ve got it on camera.’ He takes a slurp from the bottom of his lager glass and pulls himself to his feet to fetch a refill.

  BONNE NUIT

  While Murray and Len sit in the bar tipping back Daffy’s lager, Ahmed, Fawzia and their sad, exhausted children stay hidden upstairs, sleeping, praying, talking in whispers, and Daffy and Jean Baptiste slip quietly away to Daffy’s bedroom, bathed in moonlight from the big, open window, and still strewn with her clothes.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Daffy says vaguely, surveying the chaos. ‘I forgot. Sara was advising me this morning. I didn’t know what to wear.’

  ‘You would have looked beautiful in anything,’ he murmurs, gently closing the door behind them.

  She stiffens. They are alone suddenly. Alone in her bedroom in the moonlight. (How many times has she dreamed of that?) She’s terrified.

  ‘Actually. Jean Baptiste –’

  ‘Mmm?’ He kisses her.

  A moment later, not immediately, she pushes him away from her. ‘The fact is,’ she says, ‘I really haven’t – I’ve been very – You’ll probably find me absolutely hopeless. The thing is, I haven’t –’

  ‘Tu es belle, mon ange. You are beautiful. Nothing can ever be hopeless about you…Nothing…’

  ‘And the other thing is –’

  He kisses her. ‘Let’s not think about the other thing, Daffy.’

  ‘Well – but –’

  ‘We can think about him tomorrow. And I will help you, if you want me to…I promise I will help you, Daffy.’

  He’s right, of course. She doesn’t want to think about Timothy. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not at all, really. She wants to be quiet, voiceless, to be lifted up and carried to her bed – their bed – and to be made love to, in the warm evening moonlight, as she has never been made love to before…

  …Her moans echo softly across the empty Place Marronnier. They seep through Sara’s open bedroom window, as she sleeps peacefully above the boulangerie opposite. And in his bed across the square, a less peaceful Mayor Olivier Bertinard, busy devising bons mots for his television lunch tomorrow, hears the blissful sighs above his wife’s heavy breathing, and frowns to himself. Les Anglaises sont toutes des salopes, he reminds himself. English women are all sluts. He makes a mental note to call on Daffy in the morning. Noise pollution, he thinks, rolling onto his side and snuggling into his pillow. He’ll get her on that.

  SUNDAY MORNING

  Daffy and Jean Baptiste sleep what’s left of the night with their naked stomachs pressed close together, and their arms wrapped around each other’s necks. They wake simultaneously; open their eyes and smile, and continue as they’d left off a few hours before.

  Later, Daffy gazes lazily toward the open window. The sun shines warm and bright already.

  ‘I said we’d have breakfast with Fawzia and her family,’ she says, turning back, resting her cheek on the pillow beside his so that their eyes and lips are level. ‘They’re probably wondering…’ She kisses him, pushes back the sheet. ‘Poor things. It’s terrible for them to be stuck inside on such a beautiful, beautiful day.’

  He watches her as she crosses the room, pulls down her dressing gown. ‘Don’t dress,’ he says.

  Daffy smiles. ‘I can’t very well give them breakfast naked.’

  ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘It would be very lovely for them…’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so –’

  ‘I think so…Come here…’

  And she does. The sun climbs higher, the day grows hotter. From their bed they hear Murray and Len slamming out of the hotel, hear them pause beneath the open window and mutter something which makes them both cackle with laughter.

  ‘Oh God,’ Daffy giggles. ‘I’ve really got to go…’

  ‘I will have breakfast with you,’ he says, sitting up. ‘Then I will go home to finish my house, so one day you can come and live with me.’

  ‘Oh!’ she says, turning to him in surprise. ‘Do you want me to live with you?’

  ‘Mais bien sûr I want you to, Daffy. Not now. Of course not. We are just starting. It is too early.’ He laughs suddenly. ‘Who knows? Perhaps we will detest each other in a week…But, one day…If I am very lucky.’

  ‘Really?’ she says, blushing with pleasure. ‘…Well I’d love to, Jean Baptiste. One day. I mean when we’re sure we don’t detest each other. Trouble is, though, you have to remember I’m still married. Sort of thing…’

  Jean Baptiste looks at her. He shrugs. ‘You are married, I know. But not to the right man.’

  Daffy showers and goes downstairs to prepare breakfast. Sara, she discovers, has returned home to the boulangerie for a mid-morning break. Skid, having inveigled his way back into Emma’s comfortable muslin-themed bed, is nowhere to be seen, and Murray and Len have left already. Daffy shouts upstairs to the fugitives that the coast is clear for them to come down.

  And they trickle into the kitchen one by one, and are joined finally by Jean Baptiste, whose freshly showered arrival in the small room makes Daffy so feeble with desire she has to sit down and leave him to take over the coffee-making.

  She stays at the table, watches the lovely, serious faces of the two smallest children, politely eating their croissants, and sighs a sigh of pure happiness.

  ‘It’s so wonderful,’ she says suddenly, ‘to have children in the place. I just wish you could all stay here for ever!’

  Twenty minutes later they are still at breakfast. Nassir, Fathima and Hassan are chattering, half in Somali, half in English. Ahmed is asking Daffy impossible questions about her profit forecasts, and Fawzia is telling Jean Baptiste about the newspaper articles back home. Because of her husband’s wealth there has been a lot of interest in the family’s predicament. In any case, between them, Daffy and her guests are making quite a noise – enough to disguise the sound of the bar door opening and closing, and of the soft, rubbery footsteps currently making their way towards them.

  Timothy Duff Fielding pushes open the kitchen door and stands in shock, watching his wife at breakfast with her foreign friends. He can see she’s let her hair grow unkempt again, and she’s put on more weight, instead of losing it, and she’s looking animated and carefree and flushed and…happy. His first instinct, simply, is to slap her. To slap that glow from her face. His soft hand, so good at conjuring money out of air, at manipulating life to his advantage, curls into a fist of barely repressed violence, and he stands there, lips pursed, waiting for his presence to be noticed.

  Jean Baptiste spots him first. He nods. ‘Eh, Timothy,’ he says, without smiling, without standing up. ‘You have joined us for breakfast. This is quite a surprise.’

  Daffy isn’t quite so cool. She glances up, sees him stand
ing there and immediately drops her coffee cup. It lands with an ugly crack on the plate in front of her, spilling its contents across the table. She jumps up, oblivious to the pool of hot liquid dribbling over the table’s edge, over her dress and onto her feet. Her mouth begins to work. But no words come out.

  Timothy’s raspberry lips relax into a tiny smirk. ‘I suggest you go and change,’ he says, looking only at Daffy, as if no one else were in the room.

  She glances down at her cotton dress, and then back at Timothy. ‘…Timothy!’ she says at last.

  He crosses his arms. ‘Indeed, it is I,’ he replies facetiously. ‘And do I get a kiss from my fat little wife?’

  ‘What? A kiss! Yes. A kiss.’ She throws an incautious look of solidarity to Jean Baptiste and makes her way around the table towards Timothy. He puckers up. She tilts her head. But then stops.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ she says suddenly, ‘perhaps I should go and change first. I wouldn’t want you going around smelling of coffee all day!’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, vaguely surprised. ‘Yes. Very well.’

  She turns and he assumes she is making her way toward the stairs – but instead she walks back to her place at the table. ‘If you don’t mind, Timothy, I might quickly finish my breakfast first. Why don’t you join us?’

  Timothy looks at her in amazement, but decides, on this occasion, to let it go. He has a flight to catch from Bordeaux in under two hours. He’s in a hurry.

  Timothy has arranged to meet Lucy for tea this afternoon at the Danieli Hotel in Venice. The pair of them have taken five whole days off work to be alone with each other, and tonight, over bellinis at Harry’s Bar, he intends to ask her to be his wife. He has the ring (enormous – five times the size of Daffy’s). He’s never felt for anyone the way he feels for Lucy.

  ‘…Daffy,’ Jean Baptiste murmurs, smiling slightly. ‘You are sitting in the coffee.’

  The two youngest children begin to giggle.

  ‘What?’ Daffy says desperately; desperately trying to maintain her cool. ‘It doesn’t matter. Would anyone like another croissant? Timothy, perhaps –’

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends, my dear?’ He manages to make the suggestion sound vaguely disgusting. ‘I wonder why they’re not all breakfasting in the bar? Isn’t that where guests traditionally eat? In establishments such as this?’

  Ahmed and Fawzia both jump up. ‘In fact,’ Ahmed says, ‘we are just this minute leaving. Thank you, Mrs Duff Fielding, for a wonderful breakfast. Children. Finish up. We have a lot to see today.’ He looks at Timothy. ‘We are going sightseeing today. To the city of Saintes, do you know it? There is a Roman amphitheatre…very beautiful, I hear.’

  Timothy regards Ahmed with wholly undisguised dislike. There is something oddly familiar about him, Timothy thinks. About the entire family. Clearly, he wouldn’t have met them anywhere socially. So what is it, he wonders…but the answer doesn’t interest him greatly. ‘Where are you from?’ he asks abruptly. ‘You’re not from around here.’

  Ahmed tips his head. Unobtrusively nudges his nearest child to leave the table, to get out of the room, out of harm’s way. ‘Sadly, we are not,’ he says. ‘What a beautiful corner of the world this is, isn’t it? Hurry up, children. We have many things to do today. Many things.’

  Timothy doesn’t reply. Still standing at the door – strangely hesitant to come into a room so full of foreign bodies – he eyes Ahmed slowly, coolly. He smells fear. ‘Have we met before?’ he demands suddenly.

  Ahmed laughs. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Duff Fielding. No.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Timothy. Hardly!’ interrupts Daffy hurriedly. ‘But you’ve met Jean Baptiste, of course. Have you said hello to him? You met him at Emma Rankin’s dinner. And then again, when you came out…Do you remember?’

  ‘But you look familiar,’ Timothy continues as if Daffy hadn’t spoken. His eye fixes first on Ahmed, then on Fawzia, then, slowly, one by one, on the three children. ‘You all look very familiar.’

  ‘Allez,’ says Jean Baptiste, putting down his coffee, standing up. He stretches. Walks unobtrusively to the corner of the room, behind Timothy. ‘Au travail. I must go to my work.’

  ‘I’ve definitely seen you before.’

  ‘How’s James?’ asks Daffy. ‘I haven’t heard from him, Timothy. He was having trouble settling in at the tennis camp, wasn’t he? Why won’t you let him come out here? He’d have such a wonderful time…’

  ‘They chucked him out,’ Timothy says shortly. ‘Little sod refused to buckle down. Wouldn’t play by the rules.’

  ‘They what?’

  But Timothy still has his eyes on Ahmed. ‘Either I’ve seen you on television, or we’ve met before. You must know. What’s your name?’

  ‘Our name?’ Fawzia says, panic now undisguised in her voice and face. She pushes the youngest towards the door, so hard he almost falls.

  Suddenly a light comes on behind Timothy’s watchful blue eyes, and he inhales in triumph.

  ‘I know exactly who you are,’ he says calmly. ‘I know exactly. I read about you this morning. You’re those Africans,’ he hisses. ‘The ones with the boy who disobeyed our police officers. Aren’t you? You own a string of driving schools! Don’t deny it. I’ve seen your photographs in the paper this very morning!’ He turns to Fawzia. ‘And you – you must be the wife. Who’s been using my tax money to smuggle more scroungers into the country, like we didn’t already have enough –’

  ‘Timothy!’ Daffy’s laugh is high-pitched, tinged with new horror. ‘Timothy, you don’t know what you sound like –’

  He ignores her. ‘And don’t –’ he says, his malicious indignation clouding, for a moment, even his resolve to get to his future bride on time, ‘– don’t even think,’ he says, deftly side-stepping, blocking the only exit to the room, ‘– of trying to get out of this room. You’re not going anywhere…You…’ He looks at his wife, at the impudent young Frenchman who always seems to be with her, and finally, as if he can hardly stand to bring himself, at the others. He inhales, wild with emotion, ‘…you…nauseating…bastards!’

  Daffy gasps. ‘How dare you speak to my friends like that!’

  He laughs. ‘How dare I? How DARE I? How dare I?’ For a moment he seems lost for words. He takes a breath. Exhales. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  ‘No, Timothy!’ Daffy lunges towards him, grabs his hand as it delves for his phone. ‘You can’t! You mustn’t! I mean – I mean you’ve got it all wrong. That’s not these people. It’s other people. For God’s sake,’ she cries desperately, ‘we don’t even know what you’re talking about!’

  He shakes her off, knocks her against the wall, and begins to dial on his mobile phone.

  ‘Mr Duff Fielding –’ Ahmed at last finds his voice. He steps towards Timothy, hand outstretched. ‘…Please. I am asking you…If you would simply listen to us…Mr Duff Fielding, it doesn’t matter for us…but we have the children…’

  Mr Duff Fielding purses his raspberry lips, holds the phone to his ear. ‘You should have thought of that before you – Ah. Yes. International Inquiries?’ Timothy sticks a finger into his ear and turns away from the room. ‘Give me the police station in Montmaur, Charente Maritime. France. It’s urgent – That’s right, absolutely. Put me straight through…’

  ‘Mr Duff Fielding –’

  ‘Timothy! STOP! I’m begging you…’

  There’s the very faintest chance, since where there’s life there’s always hope, that he might have changed his mind if he’d been given the opportunity. He might have relented. But as he stands, his back to the room, his face screwed up with irritation at the delay, his finger thrust deep in his ear, an empty bottle comes crashing down on the back of his head. His knees buckle and without a word, with only the smallest, weakest little whimper, Timothy collapses onto the floor. Unconscious. And before anyone moves, before the children begin to cry, Jean Baptiste steps over the limp body – the second he’s laid flat on
Daffy’s kitchen tiles in as many months – picks up the mobile phone and disconnects it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ whispers Fawzia, breaking the silence at last. ‘Jean Baptiste, what have you done?’ She drops to her knees, lifts Timothy’s head, places it gently onto her lap. She looks across at her husband. ‘He’s not bleeding,’ she says.

  Quickly, Ahmed kneels down beside her. ‘He’s fine. We need to get him conscious. Quickly. Hassan, hurry, fetch water. We need to get him back on his feet.’ Ahmed begins to lift him – glances at Jean Baptiste. ‘Help me!’ he snaps.

  But Jean Baptiste doesn’t move.

  ‘Anyway,’ Daffy mumbles, ‘you said he was fine.’

  ‘I said he was fine,’ corrects Ahmed, ‘for a man who’s just had a bottle broken on his head. He’ll be a lot finer when he’s conscious.’

  ‘Finer for who?’

  They look up at Daffy, surprised.

  ‘Not for any of us,’ she continues. ‘That’s for certain…I think we should do something with him. Give him some sleeping pills or something, and keep him here until you’re clear and gone.’

  ‘No.’ Ahmed and Fawzia both automatically shake their heads.

  ‘But he’ll call the police if you bring him round. And they’ll send Jean Baptiste to jail, and they’ll send you all back to Somalia. What’s the point?’ Her eyes slide unwillingly to the shape of her husband, slumped at her feet, and she realises in that moment quite how much she hates him, how much she’s hated him all along. His pink lips are still pursed, she notices. Like he’s having a crap. She giggles suddenly. ‘Come on, Jean Baptiste.’ She nudges him. ‘If they won’t do it, we can. Let’s lock him in the cellar. Let’s lock him in the cellar for the day…Nobody’ll hear him down there…’

  ‘Mais non. You go too far, Daffy,’ replies Jean Baptiste.